Pathfinder Lost Omens: Character Guide

An adventurer's life can be difficult, but long journeys and heavy burdens are easier when you have company. This guide to the world of Pathfinder presents the people and organizations that can help—or hinder—heroes like you!

The Lost Omens Character Guide features new heritages and feats for existing ancestries, as well as three brand–new ancestries for unusual heroes forging a place for themselves in an uncertain age. Join five of Golarion's most influential organizations, fight alongside the rank–and–file members provided in these pages, or clash against them in pursuit of your own passions and goals!

This must-have 136-page guidebook for characters of all types introduces three new ancestries to the Second Edition of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game—the regimented and warlike hobgoblin, the plant-like leshy, and the inquisitive lizardfolk—provides 10 new heritages for the game's core ancestries, offers nearly 100 new ancestry feats, and presents 10 new archetypes to allow characters of any class to participate in the world's most notable organizations, from the adventurous Pathfinder Society to the rabble-rousing Firebrands to the magical masters of the Magaambya!

Average product rating:

a must have

This book has been fantastic. The amount of character options in it have really opened up my character building in ways that weren't possible in the Core rulebook alone. I agree with the sentiment another user shared that this is "the perfect companion to the Lost Omens World Guide"

While the mechanics may be able to be found off-site, I have found the information on each organization to be invaluable. The artwork is great, and overall the book has already been worth the price. I look forward to continue getting a lot of use out of this over the years to come.

Character and World as One

A perfect companion to the Lost Omens World Guide! The loads of new heritages and organizational archetypes give players ways to tie their characters into Golarion not just through flavor, but through mechanics, making them inseparable from the world they inhabit down to how and why they roll the dice.

(edited 1/7/20)

Impressive

The Pathfinder Lost Omens Character Guide really impressed me with the quality of character options, lore, and artwork. I'm used to some pretty great material and this really showcases why. There are several options for characters that are interesting and thematic enough to build entire characters around, and the lore detailing them is extensive enough to naturally integrate them into a campaign without feeling like these characters appeared out of nowhere. A great purchase overall, I hope this book sets the standard for the Lost Omens line of products.

A return to quality with a questionable price tag.

When the Inner Sea World Guide hit a decade ago, I was blown away. More than the elegant refinements made to the 3.5 system, it was the richly detailed and innovative setting that cemented my loyalty to Pathfinder. Over the years, that began to change. I started seeing a lot of supplemental books that had a lot of space allocated to either pitching other products (multiple sidebars that essentially said "if you want to make full use of these rules, check out these other books we make.") and consolidating materials that had already appeared in other sourcebooks. Until 2nd ed hit, I think it had been two years since I purchased a Pathfinder product. They were getting sloppy and they were getting lazy.

This book, and the Lost Omens World Guide, was like going back a decade in many respects. It's not wanting in either crunch or fluff. In addition to new options for all existing ancestries, it goes into new, previously unexplored detail on non-human ethnicities (and a few new human ones), something I've wanted to see approximately forever. The three new ancestries get a similar treatment, though they are, being new, a little heavier on the crunch side. While I'm a little bummed that we still don't have rules for playable Aasimars and Tieflings, it seems Paizo wants to forge its own path in this edition, and that includes branching out with their first non-core PC races. Lizardfolk seem cool, and with Oparak being added to the setting hobgoblins are a natural choice, though the leshy really come out of left field.

Ancestries comprise about half of the book, and the other half is organizations and factions. Though the Firebrands seem like uninspired ("we're a loosely organized and generic chaotic good faction, but we also dress fashionably so as to not be TOO generic!"), the rest are fantastic. We get expanded or new archtypes for all of them, as well as more feat support, and that's on top of histories, information on how they've evolved since 1st ed, and (very) brief writeups of major NPCs.

What impresses me most is that the book is all about ancestries and factions, but I didn't feel like it was stretched or padded. All 138 pages are worth reading.

But are all 138 pages worth paying for? If you like hardcover, it's probably just a little overpriced. If you prefer PDFs, though, it's almost insulting. At 10 bucks for its PDF, the Inner Sea World Guide was a steal. I happily would have paid twice that. And though this book's overall quality is similar to the ISWG, it's less than half the length for more than twice the price. Even if we account for inflation, this kind of increase is about 15 years ahead of schedule.

Overall, the books has great fluff and provides more options that are a bit inconsistent in their viability. Definitely add this to your wishlist, but unless you have a lot of disposable income, wait for a sale.

Update review.... 3.5 stars

Ok I was at first disappointed with this book/purchase. However after about a 3-4 days of going through it I have to change my rating from 2 stars to 3.5 stars. There is some good stuff in this book and as a player/DM I would have to say it a worth buy. However I still recommend you wait till this is on sale...

We don't state one way or the other in the LOCG. I've been running under the assumption that half-elves with Ekujae parents could have a wide range of skin tones that reflect their parentage and have been developing our products as such. I can see how the statement from Heroes from the Fringe could be taken as definitive, absolute fact (and we probably could have thrown in the word "typically" in there to prevent this problem in the first place), but we definitely do not want to shut down lighter skinned Ekujae or half-elf Ekujae.

We also don't want to dictate the "correct" skin tone for any people of color within our setting, so make sure to keep this in mind with all characters. If it's a skin tone you can find in the real world, you can find it on Golarion, and then some with the likes of our more extraordinary or fantastical ancestries.

Cool, thankies a bunchies! :D

That's awesome to know that all races have a variety of skin colors! :D

Now, we saw the monkey goblin art in the "Such a Lovely Place" blog post that Andrew linked above, but now contributing artist Klaher Baklaher has been so kind as to show us a glimpse at the art of more LOCG ethnicities in an album on his ArtStation!

The interesting thing in this new guide is that they make honorable mentions of all the more well known ancestries such as Aasimars, Tengu, and Teiflings at the very end of the new ancestries. Does anyone know if this is going to be an ongoing series, where we get a book 2 like how bestiaries are "Bestiary" then "Bestiary 2" or if they're going to incorporate this in a different format? And if you do have those answers can you please point me to where you got them so I can stay in the look instead of constantly asking questions on these forums?

The interesting thing in this new guide is that they make honorable mentions of all the more well known ancestries such as Aasimars, Tengu, and Teiflings at the very end of the new ancestries. Does anyone know if this is going to be an ongoing series, where we get a book 2 like how bestiaries are "Bestiary" then "Bestiary 2" or if they're going to incorporate this in a different format? And if you do have those answers can you please point me to where you got them so I can stay in the look instead of constantly asking questions on these forums?

I believe that the next book with lots of ancestries will be the Advanced Player's Guide which will include Aasimars, Catfolk, Changelings, Dhampirs, Duskwalkers, Kobolds, Orcs, Ratfolk, Tengu, and Tieflings. The playtest is supposed to begin this month. I think that this was all announced at a convention.

So I am a bit confused and disappointed by some of the content in this book. It takes TONS of page space to mention all kinds of heritages for Half-Elves and Half-Orcs but than doesn't actually offer them as heritage options that have any game mechanic differences. Hollowborn(Half-Drow) is mentioned but it isn't something you can choose and has no ancestry feats, compared to 1E such a character can get Darkvision and Light Blindness instead of low-light.

Also two pages are in my opinion wasted on listing a bunch of other common ancestries such as Tiefling and Tengu that exist around the inner sea but doesn't give them as options. This seems confusing and misleading to me this is supposed to be a character guide offering players options for character building and it offers them things they can't have. Who thought this was a good idea?

I love fluff and art but not if it comes at the cost of something else. With the amount of space wasted in this book mentioning things that than can't be used there could easily be many more pages of archetype and ancestry feats. I mean I constantly hear Paizo designers complaining that they have so much stuff they have to cut from books because there isn't room and than you do stuff like this. Not to mention the 1-2 full color advertisements at the back of each book. Why? The bulk of your business is direct to consumer do marketing someplace else.

Maybe I am alone on this but I have sowed these books to my gaming group who love 2E and the actual gaming content but they all think these Lost Omens books are too expensive for what they contain especially compared to some of their 1E equivalent books. The Lost omens World guide which don't get me wrong is an awesome book is crap compared to the Inner Sea World guide The lost omens world guide is almost twice the cost per page and should be closer to $22 than the $35 that all the books in this line seem to be. If the price per content difference is because these are hardcover now I would rather have softcover books at a lesser cost.

I really really like 2E and am subbed but if this line continues to offer more waste I may just drop back to only the AP sub and just wait for the expanded content to hit AoN.

There is an important difference between in-world ethnicities (a lore and world distinction) and in-game heritages (a mechanical distinction). Members of a given ethnicity are not locked into only one mechanical option, though they may tend towards one or more in particular, to give you the maximum possible options for your character. I would expect many a Hollowborn might take Elf Atavism (Cavern Elf heritage) to get darkvision, but not all of them have to do so, if you prefer a different feat.

There is an important difference between in-world ethnicities (a lore and world distinction) and in-game heritages (a mechanical distinction). Members of a given ethnicity are not locked into only one mechanical option, though they may tend towards one or more in particular, to give you the maximum possible options for your character. I would expect many a Hollowborn might take Elf Atavism (Cavern Elf heritage) to get darkvision, but not all of them have to do so, if you prefer a different feat.

I get that and appreciate you clarifying part of my post even though it is filled with aggressive criticism. However there should imo be at least more ancestry feats for the half breeds like this to make them more unique instead of just apeing from their parents.

There is an important difference between in-world ethnicities (a lore and world distinction) and in-game heritages (a mechanical distinction). Members of a given ethnicity are not locked into only one mechanical option, though they may tend towards one or more in particular, to give you the maximum possible options for your character. I would expect many a Hollowborn might take Elf Atavism (Cavern Elf heritage) to get darkvision, but not all of them have to do so, if you prefer a different feat.

I have to say that I really appreciate this. Having some options to individualize characters without worrying about mechanical effects is really nice.

For the people who have this book, what stands out for you ?Which of the three new races in your opinion has the most possibilitys ?The same question for the organizations? Just curious on what people think.

I did not know there were so many ethnicities for ancestries other than Humans and Elves. I am really delighted to find out about all of them. I think many were not even mentioned in previous products. Greatness abounds :-D